Blotto wrote:
How do you mean Cinema and tastes have moved on? In terms of its Genre, nothings really come out that has made it irrelevant or seem dated.

Dating or relevance doesn't really matter much, it's genre trends that matter. The current fads are book adaptations of either young adult novels or gritty Lee Child-esque thrillers. There's no real genre demand for fantasy right now. Whereas Fellowship of the Ring came out right when the big trends were fantasy (or mostly films not centred around the real world due to 9/11).

It wasn't fantasy as a whole, but escapism - something that isn't set in the modern day real world. LotR basically just came along at the exact right moment, a few months after 9/11. The Hobbit isn't going to do that this time around because the current focus is on reality, rather than pure escapism. Maybe if it came out in the middle of the Game of Thrones craze it would have done better, but that's all but over now, and TV trends rarely transfer to cinema - it's usually the other way around.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not saying it's a bad film nor suggesting it will bomb, merely that it's got fairly hefty obstacles in front of it to replicate the success of LotR (which is obviously what they're hoping for), and why it seems to be getting more apathy than enthusiasm.

meme wrote:
Yeah, but the LotR books were immense. Fellowship of the Ring alone is nearly twice the length of The Hobbit. Having to drop stuff from the book because it's too long is one thing. Having to write new shit and pull in stuff from the Silmarillion to turn it into three films is something else.

What things from the Silmarillion are in the Hobbit movies?

Orcrist & Glamdring as First age material worthy of a flashbacky type sequence. Would be hard to have all those dwarfs and not do a sequence on Aule and him bringing them into being before the firstborn.

Not massive bits, but like the Last alliance battles scenes & Isildur stuff from the LOTR trilogy, would add a bit of depth to the pretty narrow tale within the Hobbit.

Just booked my 3d 48 fps tickets. Can't wait, hopefully don't regret the decision. Not the biggest fan on 3d usually. Was massively looking forward to it until I discovered it been split in three and some of the reviews questioned this decision after watching it.